THE WHEEL OF KARMA TURNS. WHERE IT STOPS NOBODY KNOWS

In Hebrew, this concept is referred to as hashgacha pratit, divine providence

When I was 22, right out of college, I worked at the  New York City Welfare Department, in a cavernous  room filled with rows of wooden desks with linoleum tops.    Michael sat at the next desk.  

He was a tall, blond, charismatic but rather aloof fellow, a couple of years older than me, who lived on the lower east side and wrote poetry.  He’d published a few small poetry collections and was well-known in the small circle of lower east side artists and  poets he hung out with.  I found him a terribly romantic figure.  I was adrift in New York City with no idea what to do with my life but I worshipped the arts and artistic men in particular.

 I’d never considered myself attractive, but had recently lost the same 50 pounds that I’d gained and lost a number of times before,  so felt I was at  the height of sexual allure and wanted to test it out. It was the sixties and the welfare department was the temporary refuge for artistic types who needed to support themselves.   All you needed to get a job there was a college degree.  The munificent pay of $140 a week was enough to live  in a New York City walkup in those days.

I hated the job and spent my days flirting with Michael, practicing my newly acquired powers of attraction. 

Michael was married to an artist and had a small child.   His marital status just made him more attractive, seducing him was a notch in my ever-smaller belt.   Michael and I fell madly in love and had a steamy affair.

 I reveled in his adoration of me.  I tried desperately to talk him into leaving his wife, invoking the power of our love. I was a romantic to the core and didn’t question that love should always triumph.  It never occurred to me that there was anything wrong with breaking up his marriage even though his wife was pregnant. The women’s movement was in the future and in the meantime,  I was a child of the sixties who assumed marriage was a bourgeois invention that should be trashed along with the establishment.

“But she needs me, Michael protested.  “And I love her, though not the way I love you of course.”  He meant we had a lot of hot sex.  “I’m going on the road to think about it—alone.”

 In those days that’s what men did—went on the road—especially if they were romantic poets.   

For me it was out of sight, out of mind.  I fell madly in love with yet another romantic writer. Larry and I took acid, traveled cross country, dropped more acid in Haight Ashbury during the summer of love, and then traveled through South America.   After living together in Argentina for six months  Larry grew tired of my hassling him to marry me, and shipped me back home.  So much for marriage being bourgeois.

When I got back, I called Michael.  “I want to see you,” I said.  “I thought about you a lot this past year.”  I lied.     

“I still love you,” he said “but I can’t see you.  “My wife committed suicide.   After she had the baby, she  killed herself when she found out about us.” 

In all fairness she was also undoubtedly stricken by post-partum depression which was unheard of  at the time.   He now had two small children and felt too massively guilty to have anything to do with me again.

 It never really occurred to me to feel guilty about his poor wife—or poor kids—my feminism and ethical development was sorely lacking. To my eternal shame I only felt sorry for myself.   No man, no place to live, no job.

It occurred to me that maybe it was karma when 35 years later I wound up dumped by my own husband at age 58 for a younger woman, four years after we’d adopted a baby together.

 It was the height of hubris for me to think I could raise a baby at age 55—much less a drug exposed baby, which she was--but I was desperate to save  my faltering marriage, and like so many deluded women before me, thought a baby would do it.  Of course it did the opposite.

Like my romance with Michael, my husband’s illicit romance started at the local social service agency where they both worked.  Being dumped threw me into a severe depression, but I recovered. In the end I realized I was better off without this immature, raging, passive-aggressive man-child.  

Co-parenting with my ex was a nightmare.  He and his new wife hated me with a passion which defied understanding.   I wanted to have one of those friendly divorces where we all got together for holidays, but they did everything possible to undermine me.

  The one who really suffered was my daughter, who, at age 7 wound up in and out of psychiatric hospitals.  She cried every night for a year, and then started displaying destructiveness, extreme defiance, violent rages and suicidal behavior among other symptoms.   The poor kid had always been emotionally fragile—she really didn’t have the inner resources to deal with a nasty divorce.  

One day while I was visiting her in the hospital she said, “mommy, I wouldn’t be here if you and daddy hadn’t got divorced.”  

 She was a very prescient child and always had been.  My heart about stopped.    Her therapist at the hospital concurred.

“There’s not a child here who doesn’t have divorced parents,” she told me.  “You must try to get along for your daughter’s sake.”  

That did not happen although—for the record--I tried. I went to therapy with them, but the therapists gave up.   Her father and stepmother bad-mouthed me relentlessly and I wound up with an uneasy relationship with my daughter which eventually became total alienation.  

She started living with my ex and his now wife,  because she was so out of control that I couldn’t handle her.   Ironically, her stepmother turned out to be a really good mother to my difficult child.  A control freak and child psychology expert, she supervised her every move—which she needed.  She was determined to show that she could be a better mother than me.  

But her hatred for me knew no bounds.  When I ran into them in town, she’d forbid my daughter to talk to me.

Then for an inexplicable reason—because such miracles rarely happen to such severely disturbed children--the  wheel of karma turned and provided a guardian angel in the form of the extraordinary woman who ran her school’s special ed program.  By adolescence she became a different girl—a charming beauty--a brilliant and ambitious student and a hard worker who always had a job. She went on to graduate from college on the dean’s list and then to university in London for her MBA. She’s now involved in a business there.   Even though she is still not speaking to me, I am thrilled she’s doing so well.  And that she’s away from the mess that is her father’s life.

The wheel of karma had already started to spin—in the other direction—for her father and stepmother.

Her stepmother,  who wanted her own baby but was infertile, adopted a  baby.  But instead of a genius girl…she wound up with a boy who turned out to be autistic-- on the lower end of the spectrum.

They stayed together but my ex-husband got arrested for grand larceny—for padding his expenses—and was fired.  He is the original Casper Milquetoast and would never have managed to steal anything unless his wife—a master manipulator--orchestrated the scam.  The agency probably had to make an example of someone.

 With a felony on his record he hasn’t had a real job since. 

My former foster daughter (another--happier—long story) ran into him recently with said autistic son, who is now a teenager,  at the local Dollar General. 

“That kid was totally out of control,” she reported.  “He was racing all over the store grabbing stuff off shelves.  Ira was running after him begging him to stop.”

We had fostered her together but she refused to speak to him after he left me.  She is a loyal soul, and we all lived in the same small town.   Every time he runs into her, he starts crying, which is strange but certainly karmic.  

  Autistic children often become adults who can never leave home and have to be taken care of for life.  I assume that will be my ex’s job.

Meanwhile, at least one of us avoided more karmic debt--Michael.  He and I coincidentally both wound up in Woodstock, New York, after my husband and I moved there.  He had become a revered poet and local personality, happily married to his second wife with a large family.   

For years we ran into each other frequently at the library where he worked.  Whenever he saw me,  he said hello but never more than that. I suggested we get together for coffee but he seemed horrified by the prospect. 

 He’s written about his life but never about us.  A mutual writer friend tells me he’s talked about the mysterious affair he had in his twenties with someone he loved, but not that the woman was me.  

Michael wasn’t taking any chances with karma.

 If this all seems rather woo-woo, it’s not.  I’m not particularly religious, but I am a Jew and  Jews believe in karma.  According to an article in Tablet Magazine, “In Hebrew, this concept is referred to as hashgacha pratit, divine providence, and one of the principles it operates by is middah k’neged middah (measure for measure).” This means actions not only have ramifications, those ramifications will likely reflect the original deed in both their nature and their size. In Pirkei Avot (The Ethics of the Fathers), the sage Hillel discovered a skull floating in the water and said, “Because you drowned others you were drowned, and in the end those who drowned you will be drowned.”

This is tough stuff.

By my age—eighty—I think I’ve paid off my own karmic debt.  I managed to rescue another child—my foster daughter—who I’m still close to.  I’m ill and reaching the end of my life.  I hope to see my adopted daughter before I die, but I’m not counting on it.  As long as I know she’s doing well and is happy—that’s enough.

Maybe I’ll catch a karmic break in the next life.

What has your experience been with karma?